Like professional sports players your active life in IT is short. Make it pay, pay big, and have a fall-back income.
...it's not just in IT. A lot of companies freely practice "age discrimination" these days by using a number of convenient loopholes even though there are Federal regulations prohibiting it. One major player where I live does it's best to force "maturing" employees to leave by basically making it discouraging to stay on with the firm\ after one reaches a certain age. They don't think we can still "think".

This, along with the lack of any retirement provisions in the private sector anymore (save for the railroads) and an ever increasing age limit for SSI to mature (now 73, I still remember when it was 55) is what keeps many of us stuck in those wonderful low paying service occupations just so we don't wind up pushing a shopping trolley with all our worldly possessions along the pavement and sleep in a refrigerator carton or under a bridge.